Oliver Florent, doing it for Dad

Oliver Florent lay beside his father every day, for the last five days of his life. The doctors had told him he would last just 12 hours, but he made it all the way from Monday to Friday, beating deadlines like he had been for more than three years. Ollie had already told his dad everything he had ever wanted to tell him. But he wanted to make sure he had not forgotten a single thing. "It wasn't him, in the end," he said. "He was just a heartbeat. But he stayed for as long as he could."

Florent was 15 when his father was diagnosed with stage-four bowel cancer, early in 2013. It had spread to his liver, and the prognosis was not good. "I was told I was going to lose my dad in months," he said, "and I always thought I had so much more to do with him. I still feel like we have missed out on so much. But he gave me three years he wasn't meant to have and by the end it felt selfish to want more. He's always going to be here with me. I'm so lucky to have had him."

Two years ago, Andrew had been responding so well to his treatment that he was able to play legends doubles at the Australian Open; a popular member of the tennis fraternity long after his retirement, he once was the 13th-best doubles player in the world. When it came back this year, everything happened in a hurry, and Ollie knows how difficult it was for his father to come to terms with. "It takes so much mental strength to go again, to know you've beaten it once and that you have to do it all again," he said. "It's not right and it's so unfair. There's nothing that could ever be as hard, nothing in the whole world."

Still, through it all, Andrew never stopped smiling, laughing, making jokes, telling Ollie what a bad nurse he was. He came to all the games he could, refusing to use a wheelchair, "almost falling over five times one day because he would never, ever use one". The last game he got to see, before he died, less than eight weeks ago, was the best game Ollie felt like he had ever played. "It sounds stupid, but I just went in with a careless attitude, thinking it doesn't really matter what happens," he said. "There was so much else going on in my life. I just wanted to have some fun."

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Andrew Florent in action at the Australian Open in 2014. Credit:Justin McManus

He felt the same way in the last part of the season, after saying goodbye for what he thought was the final time and then watching his dad prove people wrong one last time. "He was getting up to go to the toilet and you're not supposed to be able to get up at that stage of life. People were saying, how is he doing this, and they said it was unbelievable," he said. "The things I saw him have to go through, no-one should have to go through. No-one should even see. But he's pretty much my inspiration. Nothing is as hard as what he went through. Footy is easy, compared to all that.

"I was laying there listening to his heartbeat thinking, 'I could never be more proud of you,' and it's hard to explain because I wish he was still here. There are all these things we never got to do, but we said everything to each other. There was nothing I had left to say."

Through all this, football remained what he had turned it into: fun, a place to think about other things or to think about nothing. Florent trained with his Sandringham Dragons teammates the day after his dad died because he felt comfortable with them, like they were the people he needed and most wanted to be around. "He got a lot of hugs," said talent manager Ryan O'Connor. "Everyone was so proud of him. I think football was the place where he could go to escape from everything else going on."

Florent told his dad that he was going to play in a grand final this year, and win it. He did that two weeks ago and was almost best on ground for the Dragons. He told him he would play in the All Stars game on grand final eve, and was the best player in that match. He told him he would make it to the draft combine and he is there this week, to show the AFL clubs even more of what he can do.

Oliver Florent in action for the Sandringham Dragons.Credit:Darrian Traynor/AFL Media

He smiles and shakes his head, wishing his dad got to see those last few games. He misses him a lot. It's been harder these past few weeks, as life has gone on without him, settling into a new normal he's not sure he is quite ready for, that it's even possible to prepare for. He worries about his mum, Rachael, and how his younger brother Jai is doing. He knows he has had to grow up very quickly. "I feel like one day I was being a kid, mucking around, and the next day I was an adult," he said.

"It was hard, but there was no other way. I just had to cop it, and let it be hard, let it be emotional and deal with it in my own way. I remember when I went back to training everyone said, 'What are you doing here?' But Dad would never want me to stop. He would want me to keep going and to always do my best. And the thing is, he has left me with is so many people. He's the sort of person who would make lifelong friends after five minutes of knowing them. His friends are my friends and they're going to help me through. They're looking after me, so I can look after my mum. She's struggling, like all of us. She's the toughest woman I know."

Florent knows he will miss his dad forever, that those feelings will never go away. But there are other things he promised he would do, and he wants to make sure he does them. "He knows what they are and this year was really just for Dad," he said. "I didn't care about how I felt, I did it for him and I'll always be doing it for him. In a way I'm annoyed, because he didn't get to see my best. But I know how much he believed in me and how proud he was of what I was doing. I feel like he would somehow still know."

Emma Quayle joined The Age as a cadet journalist in 1999 and has been covering football since 2001. She has won awards from the Australian Football Media Association and AFL Players Association for her feature writing, and specialised for many years in covering junior football and the AFL draft. Emma's two books - The Draft and Nine Lives (the story of former Essendon wingman Adam Ramanauskas' battle with cancer) - were published in 2008 and 2010.